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We are going on vacation for a few weeks and we will have a lot of time to relax. I loaded up my iPad with videos and pictures but I don't have enough room for everything. We also have an iPhone 5 and an iPhone 4, and I was hoping to use them for storage space.

I attempted to airdrop a movie from my iPhone 5 to my iPad, but I couldn't figure out how to airdrop a movie / video.

Also, just for my learning curiosity, since the iPhone 4 doesn't support airdrop, is there a way to wirelessly transfer items from the one device to the other? We won't have internet, but I can bring a deactivated mobile hotspot to put both devices on the same wife network without an internet connection.

For a little over 40 bucks, they are fantastic. You can store a ton of stuff on USB sticks, SD cards etc. and just plug them in to access/play it from any device (iPad, iPhone, you name it). You can copy files between iPad/iPhone etc. You can even leave your Wifi hotspot at home, this thing does it too. Hell, it even CHARGES your gear when the battery is dying.

That looks like an ideal fix, but we're trying to avoid spending any more money. I discovered the following:

I turned off Cellular Data on my iPhone 5 and iPad and disconnected both from my wifi. I uploaded the movies onto my iPhone 5 into the pictures app and was able to airdrop them to my iPad. This will be our solution.

Just for kicks, I decided to attempt a transfer between my iPhone 4 (no airdrop available) and my iPad. We have an old mobile hot-spot that is deactivated. I connected both devices to this and attempted to use the software Simple Transfer by Rambax. This was unsuccessful.

The unknown is weather the transfer would actually use data, or if the mobile hotspot needs a data connection to transfer within its own network.

Btw, just for clarification, we will have our own internet on the train, but we just don't feel like using all 10GB of our monthly data transferring movies from Sugarsync to my iPad. We will use the airdrop feature off of the iPhone 5, and attempt to download a few movies while at the hotel halfway through our trip, if the hotel's WiFi permits that.

I had an exact problem where I shot video on an iPhone 5s (better camera) and wanted to view it on my iPad Retina (bigger screen).
I found a great app (after downloading several) that works perfectly. On my iPhone 5s (or any other iPhone) I turn on Personal Hotspot in Settings. Then I use the iPad to connect to the hotspot. Next I run the app "Wireless Transfer App" (from Shenzhen Socusoft), select the device I want to transfer to and then I can either SEND or RECEIVE files to and from the 2 devices. It works both ways.
I'm transferring over the local hotspot (which doesn't use any cellular data) and it's quite fast. Plus, my iPad has a lot more memory so it was good offloading the video and photos off of my iPhone. If your iPhone doesn't allow for Personal Hotspot, you can use any portable router or deactivated mobile hotspot as you mentioned. I use Verizon - and they are required by the FCC to enable the Personal Hotspot feature on the iPhones and iPads. In any event it doesn't use any phone data so you don't have to worry about any overages.

There is a version of this program for Android as well as for Macintosh (this version is a free download from the Mac App Store)

Unfortunately, it's not free ($2.99) but the free ones out there just don't work well. I don't like to pay for apps but this program was well worth it (along with iTeleport and Sparrow Email). It does work well and for me very stable.

I just downloaded this app and it looks like basically another way of doing an airdrop, only this will work for iDevices that don't support Airdrop.

Unless I'm not seeing it, this app will not transfer videos from the videos app on an iDevice. The videos have to be in the pictures app. I can live with this, but because of OCD reasons, I prefer videos to be in the videos app and only pictures in the pictures app.